Most importantly, buying useful things, that will likely be used for a long time and contain about as much e-waste as a single-use vape.

    >People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives...

I'm surprised there isn't moralizing about the price point. I don't see why the US is so far behind in manufacturing efficiency. Everything seem to be 10-100x the cost of comparable Chinese goods, and US labor isn't paid anywhere close to 100x more.

Overall agree it seems cool, and maybe interesting.

"People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives,"

The former, totally agree - i've seen people buy a tormek to do basic knife sharpening (not grinding), which is like swatting a fly with an $800 hammer.

The latter, do you mean overall, or in a sitting or what?

I've certainly seen people on various forums go nuts, and then you have hertzmann staring at knife edges with an SEM, but even if i did it completely by hand with shaptons, it takes like 15 minutes, max, to sharpen 10 knives, through an entire insane grit progression (which i do for plane blades when i need to cleanly slice end grain without going to a super high-angle plane or something. For knives, i was just trying to get a comparison point, i use electric sharpeners in practice).

Or approximately 2 minutes with an electric knife sharpener.

While sure, there is a difference when i put them under my digital inspection microscope, either can slice paper towel cleanly and easily (slicing paper is easy, slicing paper towel ends to be hard because any burr catches really easily)

Are there really even semi-normal people out there spending hours to sharpen knives?

If so, like, why?

(Obviously, again, if they need to be reground because you knicked it really badly, sure that takes a bit, but beyond that)

None of these steels are tough enough to require all that many strokes (it's pretty easy to test it with a marker and see when you remove the marking), and if you are using super custom steels (RIP Crucible :(), carbide, or ceramics, you need CBN or diamond anyway, but the same is still true - given the correct abrasive material, sharpening knives is just not that slow.

I actually travel with an electric knife sharpener if we are going to be staying in an airbnb somewhere for >1 week and are cooking most nights. It's the most consistent thing about airbnb - no matter what level of luxury, etc, they always have many knives, and all of them are dangerously dull. It still doesn't take more than a few minutes to sharpen them all.

> ...you are never going to make meaningful progress by telling consumers to feel bad for buying fun things.

I think it's a worthwhile message to tell folks that we, collectively, should be mindful about the resources we consume and the waste we produce. For such razor-thin (lol) gains in QoL, I think it's worth reminding people to consider whether it is worth the huge increase in waste. Knives are metal and wood/plastic... awfully efficient tools for the work they get done.

EDIT: And to balance the negativity, I _love_ the Seattle Ultrasonics logo.

E-waste can be solved without reducing the number of items. Just requires basic investments in recycling.

This is also make takeaway. I have noticed this more and more on this site. Everything is criticized to an insane degree. If someone hasn't solved world hunger, while at the same time making money and curing their grandma of Alzheimer it will not be received well.

A talented chef might cut vegetables at 25hz, while the blade is moving at 44khz. So whatever cutting improvement is conferred by the ultrasonic tech will certainly be applied towards fast cutting. It seems that the main benefit for fast cutting would be that food doesn't stick to the blade.

I'll cut bread with my chef's knife (amazon shun knockoff) when I want to make less of a mess. One interesting thing I noticed is that when Scott was cutting bread in the video he was cutting a croissant and no crumbs fell.

It will be interesting to see the knife in the hands of real chefs. Two things I'm curious about are whether the ergonomics of the button are good, and whether the ultrasonic action atomizes foods as they're being cut, changing the experience of cooking in some way.

The two things that stood out to me:

"The best tools shouldn't only be accessible to the pros" but his knife costs more than every knife in that database.

The weight is listed in their help articles as 330g. I also think that handle is chunkier than a typical high end chef's knife. It may be easier to cut things with it, but I think your hand and arm are going to get tired of using it more quickly than with a regular knife at ~100g less.

And I realize these fare worse than the high end japanese and german knives, but it's hard to get excited about a $400 knife you can't put in the dishwasher when you can get a perfectly credible fibrox knife for about a tenth of that, which doesn't require charging and can tolerate 'careless home cook' levels of abuse.

I shared this with my tech friends:

“This has all the hallmarks of a product that’s going to be disappointing but I’m so optimistic it won’t be.”

I’m seriously hopefuls it works because vibroblades (I mean, “progressive knives” and “high frequency blade”) are awesome and the timelines of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Metal Gear are getting closer. Which may, or may not be a good thing.

Feel free to correct me if I’m off base, but it doesn’t seem like the robot is actually slicing. Looks more like it’s just mashing the blade into the tomato. In this case I can see how the vibration can make up for the lack of slicing action. Ie sliding the blade across the tomato.

My question is: would there still be an improvement if they used a slicing action?

I was surprised by that too. The Shun did surprisingly well in the real world test despite lower scores on the other two categories.

The nerdy sales pitch got me excited about a knife. Also, I have to wonder if the name is a deliberate nod to the Seattle Supersonics...

Nobody uses a chef's knife to cut cheese?

I can see why one would use a serrated knife to cut bread, but what knife would one use to cut cheese other than a chef's knife?

Ginsu confused us about use cases.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wzULnlHr8w&t=25s

The lower the better on the Food Cutting Rank

One obvious question is where on that list the product in question would fall.

My question for this product is entirely different: It's well-known that ultrasonic sound can still damage your hearing despite being inaudible or nearly so. Does this?

The problems were even bigger than that - they tested factory sharpness and factory geometry that often are shit. And not thinning and sharpening them properly. Let alone that the steel on the factory edge has high chance to fatigued/softer than the rest.

Does that video show him doing actual prep? I 100% believe he made a knife that can make a paper-thin slice of a lemon. But that's not what a chef's knife is for. As someone who thinks the world would be a better place if this product worked and was successful: for god's sake record someone processing an onion. That's what matters.

Free idea: put this tech in a mandoline slicer.

Even the best tend to struggle with consistency and can only go so thin due to all the friction. An ultrasonic mandoline that can overcome all that would probably fly off the shelves and better match the original industrial intent.

I am like you, but my concern with this knife is lifespan. My Japanese knives will last a lifetime. This knife has no warranty that I could find, but how long do we expect it to live? If it’s 10 years or so, I could be happy with it.

Say more? I'd love to see a takedown of this, but this isn't one. QVC does not appear to sell this product, nor would its performance differ whether or not QVC did.

Is there video online of any knife cutting off the ends of chives in mid-air?

This is nonsense and your cynicism is unwarranted. I personally know Scott. He's worked on food tech in Seattle for decades, and developed the product and fundraised for Seattle Ultrasonics locally.

Ultrasonic knives are historically large footprint devices used in commercial/industrial food prep. The innovation here is making ultrasonic hardware compact enough to fit in the knife handle.

Check out Japanese knives. The Tojiro DP I got for an inflation adjusted $75 is a dramatically better knife than that Victorinox.

In the video he says he spent a lot of time making prototypes and perfecting the design.

Is he lying? He shows images of the prototypes. Did he create fake prototypes?

It is only eWaste if you think our future does not resemble the Fallout games.

But if you do this will be excellent tech for melee weapons.

The guy has a YouTube video where he claims to have spent 6 years working on this product. Is he lying?

i don't think they slapped seattle on it because of tech connotations.

i think they slapped seattle on it because of the Seattle Supersonics, their old NBA team that still has a cult following

how do you sharpen it?

umm, you raise a valid concern, afaict, however, e-waste is kind of a taboo word around here, or? Or maybe just another part of the 'inevitable' belief system.

Like, how about that _planned obsolescence_ of a vast majority of consumer electronics hardware? (If that ain't the case, would be happen to learn otherwise from someone with better knowledge.)

> It's expensive (but not really, only compared to knives - a $500 GPU isn't expensive).

No, it's really expensive. $400 is nearly a week's pay for an hourly worker in much of the US. For many on this site it might be less than a day's labor but that's not the general case.

The lack of trust is probably because knives seem to be a favorite product of shysters. Selling expensive knives that promise the moon and wow the audience with cool knife tricks just reeks of fast talking late-night infomercial salesman trying to get over on grandma. The tech looks cool, but the presentation is off-putting.

I think it's because it seems like a Juicero to anyone who uses knives to make dinner regularly. We're fascinated by tech, and sure, I'd try this, but I bet anyone who has prepped with a knife for hours per week is probably pretty skeptical on the practicality here.

A sharpened piece of metal has been reliable for thousands of years and will continue to remain so. For new tech, I am also a fan of the ceramic knives out there for vegetables, as they hold a razors edge much longer than metal (albeit are far more brittle - I use them for veggies only, no meat).

One can buy a decent steel chef's knife, a ceramic one, lose them both, buy them again, buy a sharpening stone and a strop for the price of one of these. On one hand, the sci-fi emergence of the vibroblade or something in the kitchen would be cool. On the other, it could be a $500 vibrating slapchop[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxGn2Egekic

$500 isn’t even out of the question for a great knife, it feels like about the right price point for the product.

It's the lack of pragmatism.

"Sure, people claim the kitchen knife has been a solved problem for hundreds of years, but what if there was a kitchen knife that had a battery inside and cost $500?"

And if this version of the knife doesn't connect to the cloud, the next one will.

It all seems quite gimmicky.

It has nothing to do with how good the marketing is especially when the product is so obviously only applicable for niche use.

I think we all had very similar thoughts to yours, but just came to the opposite conclusion.

We are usually skeptical. And I don't know why a weird ad for a smart-knife has gotten to the top-page of HN.

We don't like "buzz" and "hype"... if it's truly a great technology we can buy one a year from now. Not trusting a commercial to be honest isn't undue skepticism.

Well said.

Ultrasonic knives are used commercially, this is an attempt at a mass market by making it cheaper and packaging it in a more familiar form.

> when was the last time someone tried to re-invent something as basic as a knife?

A year ago? This one is designed for woodworkers.

https://www.bourbonmoth.com/shop/p/the-bourbon-blade-origina...

Me, immediately: ooh Star Wars vibroblade!

knife is already perfect

Interesting question, short answer - almost certainly not any more or less than you are already, and to the degree it does, it almost certainly is making things better and not worse.

First - ~all food illness causing bacteria is denser than air. about 1000x denser. On its own, it won't float.

Second - almost all cutting motions are still going to throw it around. So you are already doing this when you cut or chop food. You are slicing cell walls, etc, releasing pathogens that exist inside. But it doesn't like aerosolize in the sense of floating around, because it's denser than air[1]. How far it goes depends on the cutting motion, etc.

Third - does ultrasonic make it better or worse - well, again, it doesn't overall float, so it's really a question of does it do anything to make go farther/less far, and does it do anything to destroy or the opposite?

44khz (used here) is a common ultrasonic frequency in cleaning[2] and leak detection.

In fact, it's also used to remove bacterial cells from surfaces at higher intensities (and detect them at lower intensities). It's actually one of the major ways non-heat pasteurization is done.

While it's not 100% at removing individual bacterial cells, even at super high intensity, ultrasonic frequencies are both detrimental to cell growth, and as used here, will cause lots and lots of bacterial death because of everything from cavitation to pressure changes to instantaneous heat to you name it.

Does it fling pathogens any further? Maybe? I'm sure there are some situations in which it will. But they don't seem normal. Like if you are just slicing raw meat or chicken, it's hard to see how it could do that.

Overall, it probably helps more than it hurts. As far as i can tell, it's not even a close question.

[1] It is possible to get the bacteria to float in air anyway due to brownian motion and other mechanisms, but it still seems overblown - the percent of food borne illness caused by inhaling bacteria vs eating underprepared food it is so small they don't even bother to track it. This knife is not going to change that.

[2] If you google it, you will also discover it's emitted by fearful rats. I don't know if the knife also scares rats away.

That's good point, aerosolized raw chicken meat water doesn't sound like a good time.

Great question. It does seem like you would not want to use it for raw chicken.

This thing is $399, which is on the expensive side of prestige chef knives, but by no means the extravagant side of it. People who buy knives that cost more than $150 generally buy lots of knives, and this is priced for that market.

The battery is comes out for recharging, so replacing a dead battery should be trivial

I was searching for this comment. All the snark in this thread, I’m just excited that we’ve invented working vibroblades lol

Now if they could get the vibrations by shooting a bullet along the edge, we'd also have gunblades!

the next version will come with plasma micro jets ejection from the cutting edge - convenient for civilian use. I'm also wandering about an array of shaped micro-charges on the edge - should be able to cut through several millimeters of steel in one move, etc. so a soldier can cut though an opponent's ballistic vest or a into an lightly armored IFV.

> Cannot be made full screen

Wha? I tapped the little diagonal expandy-arrows in the top corner and it went full screen.

I hate that default click action is mute and that the cursor is replaced with speaker.

But as you say, most people don’t do that. So “the only actual benefit” is something of value to most people.

How much do you actually cook though? As a former professional chef I still do a lot of cooking and I’d love one of these and any storage trade off looks absolutely worth while.

A lot of the cool stuff we have now started off for accessibility.

If it works at least as well as the current electric knives, it let's you cut things you'd usually not try to cut.

Thin slicing frozen meat for instance, carving pumpkins, cutting bones etc.

I think it would be fine as u would need a lot less knives so one bespoke one with a charger wouldn’t be that big of a deal

Have you watched any Cold Steel videos?

Yeah, have to say the video is pretty good. I came in expecting the typical shopping channel pitch, but it did a very good job explaining the things the knife can and can't do. It really helps that it's presented by the inventor himself.

Still won't buy one but still.

Thanks for the share, hadn't seen that before.

why does tumblr make me sign in to see posts

So you're basically saying that you can spend as much money to get a knife that will cut as well but requires regular work put into it, whereas this doesn't? I think that's the whole pitch here...

Sound is on for the tomato shot in the beginning of the video, FYI. It is extremely quiet.

Sourdough can actually be a pain to cut without making a giant mess of the crust

I'm an amateur cook, my immediate question was how much the vibration and heating will affect vegetable and meat oxidation and cell damage on the cut surface.

Could this improve the texture and flavor of certain foods? Like make garlic taste even more garlicky? Or could it cause an apple slice to brown faster? Can it be used to slice cooked fish as if it were sashimi? Etc.

If a site like SeriousEats does a product review I hope they focus on qualitative taste, and possibilities for enhancing cooking techniques, not merely saving time/effort to do something.

It depends completely on the knife. A nakiri or a bunka wants you to push cut, for instance.

I definitely did notice that the video didn't show any bulk prep work: a clean cut through a single product is not nearly as interesting to me as how cleanly and quickly I can work through a couple onions.

That’s not necessary with an ultrasonic knife and would generally be a waste of time. The vibrations take the place of needing to slice, rather than chop. This knife is not meant to be used like a normal chef’s knife.

I’d still never get one because I love my knives (and zen out hard when sharpening for an hour or two), but the push is literally the goal here.

Oh wow - would love to know what you got for sharpening, or what you'd suggest for the home cook?

When you say ugly/clunky - I'm guessing you mean it's a bit heavier, or the weight will be off compared to a good high-end chef's knife? (I don't have anything like that, haha).

I did note on their FAQ they say to never activate the blade whilst sharpening:

https://seattleultrasonics-ceizljlxnpt.gorgias.help/en-US/ho...

> Do not activate the ultrasonics during sharpening - this can damage both the blade and your sharpening stones, as the ultrasonic movement is too aggressive and not evenly distributed across the entire cutting edge. Also, reshaping the blade to a different belly curvature or tip shape can cause it to fall out of tune, so avoid removing more material than you would during normal sharpening.

If it helps, the inventor worked at other kitchen product companies like Sansaire (founder) and Anova. And at other places in the cooking world. So they’re not entirely unknown either.

It's not made for people with knife skills.

I've read multiple reviews saying the chefs choice sharpeners are basically useless. Having owned 2 of them I can confirm they seem to do almost nothing after the first few times using them.

A few YT knife channels have done deep dives showing why they stop working soon after purchase, the details escape me but I have to agree with the end result....

There are surgical scalpels that are ultrasonic, and they are incredibly sharp when activated. They can cut through skin and tissue like butter!

And the chopping of serrano peppers.

Theres a whole class of people who will pay more to not have to maintain things themselves. I bought an EV because they require little maintenance and I also hate filling up.

I have decent knives but have probably never sharpened them properly. If there are more reviews, I'd pick this up.

But I want a ultrasonic knife.

Agreed. Even a knife with heavy usage only needs a few swipes to realign the edge. Warning though, sharpening things can be addicting. I have a massive straight razor and finishing stone collection. It's a wonderful hobby, but dipping into natural stones gets very expensive

It's ultrasonic; the frequency is much higher while the amplitude is much smaller.

Watch the video.

Huh I didn’t even think about this. I’m assuming you mean the frequency is audible to dogs?

The bit that looks actually interesting to me is buried in the middle of the video - while the ultrasonic switch is on, food visibly falls off the knife instead of sticking to the sides.

This could be the exemplar prototype for Dune knives that can penetrate a Holtzman Shield. Also recall in Dune there is an aversion to technology, so the simplicity and required human operation is a perfect fit.

Dune's vibrating shield and corresponding weapons.

Raven in Snowcrash? Not quite ultrasonic iirc but extremely thin, like the wire developed in three body problem

It's seemingly quasi-semi-related to The Foundation's 'atomic knives'?

dune?

My wood cutting board has rubber feet on the bottom. Seems like a much easier solution than handling a bunch of wet towels every day!

Why a wet cloth?

He specifically says it's not a lightsaber, and when he's cutting the tomato you can see he does have to apply force for it to go through. He compares it to an ebike, where it makes cutting easier but it's not magic.

Same as a really sharp knife. In general though, dull knives are more dangerous. You have to cut with more pressure and they're more likely to slip.

Subsidized by Big Hook, no doubt.

It is indeed more dangerous than a regular knife.

“Chef knife” is the important part, the one you linked is a paring knife.

I'm still in the camp that air fryers are stupid. A convection oven does literally the same thing.

Also, portable air fryers make such small servings that they're useless for people with families. What the hell I going to do with three chicken wings?

Just kids having fun.

I agree. My experience: I bought some basic sharpening stones and watched some youtube and have had pretty good results with my basic japenese chef knives (~$100-150) that I've had for 15 years. It's 5 minutes of work every month or two for me. This product doesn't make sense to me for the price point. The aesthetics look really poor.

In particular, you don't need expensive stones, guides or lapping systems to do it. An aliexpress-grade 3000/8000 waterstone, a flattening stone and a strop will get most knives shaving the hairs off your arm for under £20 all-in.

The entire argument in the thread about how to best sharpen a knife is why people don't bother learning how to sharpen knives.

Like holy shit, I'm just going to pay someone a few dollars to do it because I don't want to bother sorting out all of the contradictory advice!

I agree. The industry standard for a great, boring, durable and surprisingly cheap knife is the Victorinox Fibrox Chef's Knife 20 cm.